| Title |
Acute and chronic nicotine effects on working memory in aged rats
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Psychopharmacology, January 1996
|
| DOI | 10.1007/bf02246285 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
E. D. Levin, D. Torry |
| Abstract |
Acute and chronic nicotine administration has been repeatedly been found in our laboratory to improve working memory performance of normal adult rats in the radial-arm maze. The current study was conducted to determine if acute or chronic nicotine administration would improve working memory performance in aged rats. Sixteen young adult (3-7 months) and 32 aged (24-28 months) male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained on an eight-arm radial maze. A significant age-related choice deficit was seen during the 21 sessions of training. After training, half of the rats in each age group were implanted with nicotine-containing osmotic minipumps and the other half implanted with vehicle-containing pumps. Consistent with previous work, the young adult rats given chronic nicotine (approximately 5 mg/kg per day as measured as nicotine base) showed a significant improvement in working memory performance. In contrast, the aged rats did not show a significant effect of this dose of chronic nicotine. After a 2 week withdrawal period the remaining rats underwent a series of acute drug challenges with nicotinic and muscarinic agonists and antagonists as well as the dopaminergic antagonist haloperidol. Mecamylamine and haloperidol impaired the memory performance of the young adult rats, whereas the aged rats showed no effect. In contrast, scopolamine impaired performance of both young adult and aged rats in a similar manner. Both pilocarpine and nicotine improved the memory performance of the aged rats, but did not improve the young adult rats, possibly due to a ceiling effect on performance. During the cholinergic agonist drug phase, the aged rats which had previously been given chronic nicotine infusions showed better performance than those which had not. The resistance of the aged rats to chronic nicotine-induced working memory improvements and acute mecamylamine-induced working memory deficits may have resulted from the decline in nicotinic receptors seen with aging. Chronic co-administration of the nicotinic antagonist mecamylamine in a previous study was found to abolish the chronic nicotine-induced working memory improvement. The aged rats were resistant to haloperidol-induced deficits which may have resulted from the decrease in dopaminergic receptors seen with aging. Interestingly, acute cholinergic agonists including nicotine did improve working memory performance in the aged rats and previous chronic nicotine infusion was beneficial during the period of acute cholinergic agonist challenge. This suggests that nicotinic treatment may be of use for treating age associated memory impairments but that special dosing regimens may be required. |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 45 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 2 | 4% |
| Unknown | 43 | 96% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 11 | 24% |
| Professor > Associate Professor | 6 | 13% |
| Student > Bachelor | 5 | 11% |
| Researcher | 4 | 9% |
| Student > Master | 3 | 7% |
| Other | 5 | 11% |
| Unknown | 11 | 24% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 10 | 22% |
| Neuroscience | 7 | 16% |
| Psychology | 4 | 9% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 4 | 9% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 2 | 4% |
| Other | 6 | 13% |
| Unknown | 12 | 27% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 September 2016.
All research outputs
#6,431,007
of 22,849,304 outputs
Outputs from Psychopharmacology
#1,842
of 5,351 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#13,353
of 79,282 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Psychopharmacology
#4
of 25 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,849,304 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 70th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,351 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.6. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 64% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 79,282 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 25 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 84% of its contemporaries.